Fools

As I lay in bed that night, at a hotel a long way from home, it all came back to me like a bad movie I couldn't turn off.

Over the previous 15 years, I had never forgotten what had happened, but I had managed to suppress it and not dwell on it.

But earlier that night, it had been forcefully thrust back into the forefront of my conscious thoughts...

^ ^ ^ ^

I was shaking all over, except for my hands. They were rock steady as I held the pistol inches from her head while she slept in our bed.

She was naked, with the sheet covering only her lower legs, and I could still see in the soft glow of the bedside lamp the gelid semen as it pooled between her legs. Her butt was shining from where the man's juices had seeped from her thoroughly well-fucked pussy, a pussy that until earlier that night I thought had been exclusively mine.

It's the oldest cliché in the books, but it happened to be true in my case. Husband comes home early from a business trip, finds his wife with another man, etc., etc.

I had been gone the whole week and I wasn't due to return until Friday. But we'd busted our butts and gotten finished late that Thursday afternoon, and I was so eager to return to Jeanette's waiting arms that I changed my plans and drove on home that night.

The first inkling I had of trouble was when I called the house and Jeanette sounded out of breath. There was a sultry slur to her voice like she was a little drunk and had been on the receiving end of pleasure.

That by itself wouldn't have aroused my suspicions so much, except that I could hear the sounds of a baseball game going on in the background. Now, Jeanette didn't much like sports anyway, and she loathed baseball, calling it boring.

So what was a baseball game doing playing on the TV, if I wasn't there, and quite loudly at that?

For some reason I'll never be able to fathom, I made a snap decision not to tell her I was on my way home. I just made it sound like I was making my normal nightly I-love-you call, the way I did every night I was on the road. Whether that would have changed anything, I'll never know.

When I turned onto the street where our house was located, I knew my worst fears had been realized. A strange car, one I'd never seen before, was parked in the driveway and all the lights in the front of the house were dark.

I knew in my gut what was happening, but I had to see for myself, so I parked on the street then carefully -- and quietly -- walked to the side door by the breezeway. It wasn't locked, so I silently let myself in, took off my loafers and padded through the utility room entrance to the kitchen.

As soon as I opened the door I could hear Jeanette and I knew she was engaged in some sexual activity. She was moaning in a way that was peculiarly her own, not especially loud, but very throaty, very distinctive.

But I still had to see, so I crept down the hall, past the closed door to the bedroom where our 4-year-old daughter Jamie was asleep (I guessed). I tip-toed to the door to our bedroom, and now I knew Jeanette wasn't alone. I quietly opened the door and was confronted by my worst nightmare.

My beautiful wife of six years was on her hands and knees getting royally plowed by a large man who appeared to possess a cock that was considerably longer, though maybe not much fatter, than the one I had on me.

What's more, he was running on at the mouth in some truly demeaning terms as he fucked my wife.

"Who owns you, slut?" he taunted. "Whose pussy is this? Who's got the best cock?"

"Oh God! You do," Jeanette moaned. "It's all yours, all for you, baby, just please keep fucking me. Fuckmefuckmefuckme!"

Then my "loving wife" buried her face in the pillow as she squalled out an orgasm more explosive than anything I'd ever seen her achieve with me. But her lover wasn't letting her off the hook. He pulled her up by the hair and kept on taunting her about what a slut she was, and how she was his whore, how she had proven it the day before.

"Yeah, you liked having all those cocks at your disposal," he taunted. "You liked getting gangbanged. Didn't you, whore."

"Unnnnnhhhh! Y-y-y-yeah!" Jeanette cried. "I loved it! I'm your hot s-s-s-slut!"

I was literally sick to my stomach, because I had had no clue, none whatsoever, that Jeanette was anything less than totally devoted and completely faithful to me.

Sure, I had been traveling a lot in the previous year, but when I was home, she was never anything less than as affectionate as she'd always been and our sex life was active, even with a 4-year-old in the house. Hell, we were even talking about having another baby.

A blind haze descended over me, but somehow I managed to keep my wits about me just enough to not force an immediate confrontation. I somehow sensed that would go badly for me.

I'm not exactly a wimp, but this guy was probably five inches taller than me and outweighed me by a good 40 pounds and it looked like he was all muscle.

No, I needed an equalizer if I was to avenge myself, and at that moment that was the only thing that was on my mind. And I knew just where I could find what I needed.

I silently closed the bedroom door -- they never even knew I was there -- slipped out of the house, climbed back in my car and drove away.

My father was a cop at the time, and he was a gun buff, so he kept an array of pistols, rifles and shotguns. He'd taught all three of his kids -- I have an older sister and a younger brother -- how to shoot when we were in our teens.

Moreover, I knew where he kept the key to his gun safe and by a fortuitous twist of fortune, Mom and Dad were vacationing in the Rockies in their RV, which was his pride and joy.

I always kept a key to their house, so I could feed the dog whenever I was home and they were traveling, so my arrival at the house, even at that late hour, wasn't unduly suspicious.

But, to be honest, I didn't care at that moment whether anyone knew what I was doing or not. It didn't matter to me, because I wasn't going to be around for it to matter. I was going to get one of Dad's pistols, shoot Jeanette and her lover (if he was still there), then I was going to kill myself.

Jeanette's adultery, coming as it had so suddenly out of nowhere, had taken every bit of my will to live.

I remember that I was in a daze as I drove into my parents' driveway, let myself in, deactivated the alarm system and went to Dad's study. I looked in his desk drawer and found the key I needed, then went to the gun cabinet.

I found a pistol that suited me, a 9mm automatic. I opened the clip, found it loaded, closed it back up and stuffed the pistol in the waistband of my pants. I was ready.

I closed the cabinet and left my parents' house without even remembering to reactivate the alarm and drove back to my house.

At no time during all of this did I think about anything other than what I planned to do when I got there. I'm a pretty single-minded person, and when I get myself set on a course of action, I can be relentless in achieving my objective.

I was vaguely disappointed when I saw that Jeanette's lover's car was gone, indicating that he wasn't planning on staying the night. But I simply shrugged that off; the focus of my wrath was my wife.

Once again, I slipped silently into my house and now I stood poised to blow away the cheating bitch I thought I'd loved, then end my own misery.

Suddenly, I heard a sound from behind me, a soft gasp.

"Daddy?" Jamie said softly. "Daddy? Why do you want to shoot Mommy?"

For some reason, that penetrated the fog that my mind was under and I realized what I was about to do to my beautiful little girl. I'll never know what caused her to wake up, what caused her to get out of bed and investigate at that precise moment. Divine intervention? That's the only answer than makes sense to me.

Suddenly, it seemed like everything happened all at once. Jeanette awoke with a start, then screamed when she saw me standing there with a gun in my hand. Seconds later, I let out an inarticulate howl and threw the pistol across the room to smash the picture of our wedding that sat on the dresser, which scared Jamie and she started bawling.

With tears stinging my eyes and Jeanette's shouts for me to, "stop, please, let me explain," ringing my ears, I scooped my daughter up, held her to me as I dashed for the door. She was clinging onto me for dear life, sensing, I guess, that her world was about to be turned upside down.

"Wh-wh-where are we g-g-g-going, Daddy?" Jamie asked between her sobs.

"We're going to Paw-Paw and Nana's for the night," I said through my own sobs. "Mommy did something very bad and we can't stay there. We'll come back tomorrow and pick up your things. But we have to get away before something really bad happens."

And with that I dissolved into sobs like I hadn't sobbed in years...

^ ^ ^ ^

I had returned to my hometown for a convention in my chosen field, one in which I had become quite successful. I was ambivalent about going home. So much had changed over the 15 years since that awful night, when I came close to committing a murder-suicide.

The city had grown remarkably, but in its wake it had left me and mine behind. Both Mom and Dad were gone. Dad had contracted lung cancer and had died eight years ago, and Mom had basically died of a broken heart just six months later.

My sister had never made the place her home, and my brother had moved on after getting a lucrative job offer halfway across the country. So, after Mom died, I had no reason to go back, and I hadn't. Too many bad memories.

Following the next to last day of the four-day affair, I was tired of being cooped up in a hotel room and decided to venture down to the hotel bar for a couple of beers. I have to be very careful about my drinking, because there was a time when it nearly killed me. But I can handle a couple of brews and I felt like I needed them to unwind.

As I usually did, I found a corner booth and sat where I could see everything in the bar. That had been a habit I got into a long time ago, part of the lack-of-trust issues that arose out of my breakup with Jeanette.

I was nursing my second beer when she walked in. I cursed silently that she would show up the one night I'm at the one bar I'm going to patronize the one time I return to my hometown.

I knew immediately it was her. You don't live with someone -- especially someone as beautiful as Jeanette -- and not be able to recognize her, even after 15 years. Actually, I had seen her once or twice in the intervening time, but I hadn't laid eyes on her since my mother's funeral, and we hadn't spoken then.

In a lot of ways, she hadn't changed a bit. She had the same cat-like walk, accentuating her height, which was right at 5-10. She had the same red hair worn the same way, a little past her shoulders, and the same fiery green eyes.

But there were some things that had changed about her. The one thing I noticed that was different -- well, at least, the first thing I noticed right away -- was that she had clearly augmented her breasts. They were fuller and fatter than I remembered them, and they were bouncing around in her gold lame blouse free and easy.

She seemed to be looking for someone, and that gave me a chance to look at her a little closer, and what I saw I didn't like. She was quite heavily made up and the relatively short skirt and stockings gave her a slutty look that did not flatter her. There also seemed to be a bit of hardness about her, like she'd seen some hard knocks.

After a minute, during which time she walked over to the bar and got a drink -- for which she didn't pay -- she apparently saw who she was meeting, and I was even less impressed.

I recognized the guy as being there for the convention, and remembered him as something of a blowhard, a braggart who appeared to fancy himself a ladies man. But he just seemed a little too soft to be a real player, and unless I guessed wrong, he was about to have to pay for the privilege of spending time with my ex-wife.

I don't know why I got up and intervened. Maybe it was a latent feeling of caring for Jeanette, maybe I was just curious about her and maybe I just wanted to rattle the asshole's cage a little.

I casually walked over to the booth that Jeanette had just occupied, leaned over and whispered in the guy's ear.

"Time for you to leave, buddy," I said. "Go on, hit the road."

He looked up at me with anger in his eyes, at least until he saw the look in mine.

"You can't tell me what to do," the man said in a slightly squeaky voice. "We have a date. Don't we, Jeanie."

Jeanette just shrugged her shoulders and watched impassively. I reached down with my free hand, grabbed his nuts and whispered in his ear again, this time with naked malice in my voice.

"If you don't piss off in the next 10 seconds, I'll rip off your puny little cock and shove it down your throat," I whispered, and I squeezed hard, a move that made him gasp and his eyes bulge out, until I released his nuts and stood aside to let him out of the booth.

"You're not worth getting hurt over," he said to Jeanette as he scampered away.

With the seat conveniently free, I sat down opposite Jeanette. We just stared at each other, wondering who was going to break the ice. Naturally, she did.

"You always did have a flair for dramatic entries," she said. "Maybe if you'd been that forceful 15 years ago, we'd still be together."

"Nah, I got this way because of what you did to me," I said, then I nodded toward her empty glass. "The usual?"

"Of course. I haven't changed that much," she said, so I called the waitress over and ordered Jeanette a gin and tonic and me another Bud Light. I was hovering dangerously close to my self-imposed limit, but I really didn't care at that point.

"You're looking good, Jason, real good," Jeanette said with some warmth.

"Thanks," I said. "After we moved, I joined a gym and got serious about getting in shape. I made up my mind I was never going to come up second-best again."

"Jason, you were never second-best," she said with a pained expression. "You're the only man I've ever loved, or ever will love. You'll never be second-best in my heart."

"Ah, but in your pussy?" I said bitterly, then decided not to go down that road. "I'm sorry, Jeanette, that was uncalled for."

"No, it's all right, I deserved that," she said. "I loved you -- still do -- but I have demons in my soul that needed feeding. As long as you were always around to take care of me, I could fight them off, but when you started traveling..."

An awkward silence enveloped us as we both let unwanted memories wash through our consciousness. Finally, I asked the one question I'd been pondering ever since she'd walked in the door.

"You working tonight?" I said.

Jeanette kind of chuckled, confirming my suspicions about her line of work.

"Yeah, Jeanie's on the job," she said bitterly. "You know what they say: once a whore, always a whore. And I think it was you who told me that fucking was something I did better than anything else. So I might as well make a living at the one thing I'm really good at."

"So, it's Jeanie now?" I said.

"Yeah, Jeanette died when you left me," she said, and I could see her composure was about to break. "Jeanette was a wife and mother; Jeanie's a-a-a whore."

With that she dashed off to the ladies room with her hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle her tears. She'd left her purse sitting on the chair, so I knew she'd be back.

Against my better judgment, I had a fourth beer, and I could feel the buzz starting to take hold. I hadn't had four beers in one sitting in years, and it was starting to hit me. Fuck it, I thought. This was one night I welcomed the refuge alcohol was providing.

Jeanette returned about 10 minutes later, with her makeup in some bit of repair, but her eyes were still swollen like she'd been crying hard in the ladies. But she had a brave smile on her face, like she was ready to face up to me.

"How... How's Jamie?" she asked tentatively.

"She's fine," I said, as I pulled out my wallet and showed a picture of our daughter. "She's a sophomore at college now, almost a straight-A student. She's majoring in psychology."

"She'll be an achiever like her father," Jeanette said. "And your wife? What was her name? Karen?"

"Kathy," I said. "We're fine. You know she gave Jamie a pair of little brothers, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew," she said. "Your mother told me not long before she passed away. I miss her more than I miss my own parents. You know she was the only one who didn't shut me out of their lives. I know I brought it all on myself, but it was still hard to see friends and family turn their backs on me. Only your mother, God rest her soul."

Another pregnant silence followed, and I knew I needed to finish this beer and go back to my room. I'd had enough tripping down memory lane to last me for another lifetime. But Jeanette still had one thing left to say.

"Jason, do you still hate me?" she said, and again the tears were flowing down her cheeks.

I just stared at her for 10, maybe 15 seconds, then shook my head.

"I never hated you, Jeanette," I said softly. "I hated what you did, to me and to Jamie. But I could never hate you. It wasn't in me. Time has a way of healing all wounds, and I've gotten on with my life. I had a daughter to raise and I didn't have time to wallow in a lot of self-pity, although I did my share of serious drinking for awhile. If it's any consolation, I do forgive you. It wasn't entirely your fault. I was too ambitious, too driven in my work, and I didn't see what it was doing to you, to us. It blinded me to those demons you talked about."

"Thank you," she whispered. "I'm glad you're happy now. You didn't deserve what I laid on you, and it will haunt me to the day I die."

"Look, I've got to go," I said. "I've got another full day tomorrow, then I'm flying home tomorrow night. Four days here are too many for me. I've already paid homage to my past and now it's time to go home."

I fished one of my business cards out of my wallet, wrote my home number on the back and told Jeanette to call me if she ever needed anything. Then we stood up, looked at each other, then I reached for her and we hugged.

"Goodbye, Jason," she said. "I'm glad I got to see you. I meant what I said. I'll always love you."

"Take care of yourself, Jeanette," I said, then turned and walked away without a second look back. I knew if I looked back, or if I stayed any longer, I might never leave her again.

^ ^ ^ ^

We grew up in the same town, but went to different high schools and she was two years behind me in school. I was a sophomore in college and she was a senior in high school working for a dollar store. I was home for the Christmas holiday and I had to pick up wrapping paper.

Working the register was this tall redhead with a body that was all curves. I'd played baseball in high school for a pretty good program, so I wasn't a shy guy at all. I started chatting her up and we started to get friendly. I went back a couple of times, mostly just to see Jeanette, and I ended up asking her for a date.

I can't say for sure if we fell in love at first site, but by the end of that first date we knew we had some strong feelings for each other. We didn't fuck that night, but we made out like bandits and I learned right quick that she knew her way around a cock.

She also knew her way around booze and weed. I was a pretty dedicated beer drinker at the time, but I was never real keen on drugs, although I'd been around enough to know what to do when someone passed me a joint.

But I took Jeanette to a New Year's Eve party and there were joints making the rounds on a pretty regular basis.